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Monday, May 18, 2009

May Days is a long-weekend community celebration here. Basically an invitation to the community to come out and play. There are dances, actual sporting events like a bike race and ridiculous events like canoe-jousting, three-legged races and potato sack races, there's an outdoor market, game tents like fish ponds, carnival food like ice cream, elephant ears and cotton candy, outdoor entertainment, a parade, raffles and the honouring of community citizens for their volunteerism. And dozens of other events.

As usual my kids were contributing musically. Noah's quartet played a couple of numbers. They had a long wait during a folk duo, so they milled around with their instruments and chatted with Fiona on the swings.

Erin had been commandeered into playing the keyboard for the Maypole dance. Sophie looks rather underwhelmed by the skipping kids with ribbons, doesn't she? The Maypole was unusually successful this year, with no tangled kids needing to be rescued and no one crying. Must have been the great music accompaniment!

Summit Strings played too. Some of you complain about never seeing pictures of me, so I included one of me introducing the group. Yes, I actually exist, even if I'm usually holding the camera!

The best part of this May Day was the unstructured stuff, though. Fiona had her first cotton candy -- what an adventure! I didn't get any photos of Sophie at all (except tucked in behind the second music stand on the mainstage) because she was off doing stuff in the park with her friend, hanging out at the petting zoo, lining up for various sugar-laden treats and just enjoying herself.

Erin and Noah had a lovely time hanging out with friends ... and, surprisingly, just with each other, even after their friends left or got busy with other things. They wandered around being strange, chatting with various adult friends, goofing around with each other, checking everything out.

There's something so wonderful about living in a town where kids can just run loose like this, safely and comfortably, enjoying themselves and each others' company and all the interest and excitement that a community event offers.